City Council Update 9.20.22
City Council Update 9.20.22: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix
City Council Update 9.20.22: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.
Steve:
Welcome to a Redding City Council update for full details on each of the items covered or to watch meeting online. Visit the city of Redding dot org or find the links in the episode show notes for any questions, suggestions or comments. Please Email podcast at City of Redding dot org.
Kim Niemer, Director of Community Services:
Hi, this is Kim Niemer. I am your community services director for the City of Redding and I'm sharing with you an update or a report out from City Council meeting held September 20th, 2022. It was a busy meeting, lasted almost 3 hours. Started off with a very interesting and informative presentation by Shasta County Sheriff Michael Johnson, as well as Assistant County Executive Officer Eric Marini. They shared a presentation similar to what they had given to the Board of Supervisors a couple of weeks ago regarding planning for a new jail facility or expanded jail facilities. So they shared to of two ideas, one being a more short term proposal, which would be to construct a new building adjacent to the existing jail that could accommodate another 256 beds. The other kind of bigger vision would be for a new campus east of the city off old Alturas Airport Road on county owned land there near a former landfill site. That site would be the whole facility would move to that area and would have many more services, programs, facilities available, potentially even including some homeless transitional housing. So they shared their ideas about both visions. The city council shared their ideas. A few of them indicated that they thought that they should start planning for the bigger vision instead of the smaller one, and indicated the city's interest in being part of the the planning. And the sheriff indicated that they had hired a consultant who would be facilitating some meetings in November from various stakeholder groups.
Kim Niemer, Director of Community Services:
So with that, they basically just said this is a kind of just a check in, no decisions, no specific recommendations or proposals, but that they are continuing to work towards a goal of expanded jail facilities and the near future. After that, we went to the consent calendar. The consent calendar is a long list of more routine items, and the Council adopts that list as a whole. So some of the items that were included in that this week included a grant from the Martin Luther King Junior Center for $68,000 from the Shasta County Probation Department. This will provide some academic tutoring, enrichment programs STEM science, technology, engineering and math programs. So some really good work that we are doing at MLK, supported by the probation department, which hopes to keep our youth out of their system. So we appreciate that partnership. Also, there was money for a grant from the California Office of Traffic Safety to Redding Police Department, almost 150,000 for overtime training and some equipment to increase traffic safety enforcement. So that's always well received. And we'll help get more officers out there on overtime to do traffic control and safety. Also, for those who've been around for a while, you'll know that the city had a river boat a few, many years back and ended up going to the Shasta County Fire Department and now it's coming back to the Redding Police Department.
Kim Niemer, Director of Community Services:
So the Redding Police Department is hoping to do patrols along the Sacramento River within city limits. And this boat, which was originally a grant from the foundation, will be used for that purpose. We gave an update on a number of economic stimulus projects. These were done after COVID 19 to get some projects out to bid for local contractors. And we've had over $3 million in projects completed and more on the way. We heard a presentation from Assistant City Manager Sherry Demand on consideration of a citywide fire mitigation program. Sherry provided some background on what they were doing. The recommendation this came after the Carr fire and some work that we did with a group called CPR to look at ways to harden our community against wildfires and to strengthen building codes and other practices again so that we would be more resilient against wildfires. And in that, her recommendation was to authorize additional research that they would come back, including vegetation management. Code changes and then also estimating the costs for implementing such programs. So you'll hear more about that again at another time. We got a presentation from Mark Crist of the Housing Department on the Downtown BLOCK, seven projects, so lots of buildings going up there. He had a nice slideshow with some renderings and visuals.
Kim Niemer, Director of Community Services:
So if that's a project you're tracking, I'd encourage you to watch the video. We also got financial reports from both the city's finance department around the general fund and also the electric utilities. So I would say that generally the finances citywide are doing very well, slightly above projections, some areas more above projections. But we continue to manage the resources that we have and hold the city in a sound financial position. The electric utility continued to explain that they are sending out more money than they're taking in right now in a plan to make some capital investments and also in a very turbulent resource time. So the drought impact on hydroelectric sources, as well as the high temperatures this summer have sort of taxed our model and we've had to pay more money for power than we typically like to do, but they are managing it well. And we'll be coming back with a report again in the next quarter to let the council know how they're doing. Additionally, probably one of the topics of most interest was a report out at the end of the meeting by the city attorney regarding the case in the Redding Rancheria versus city of Redding on the right of way on South Shelly, adjacent to the proposed casino site. So in that case the court has found for the rancheria. So it's important to understand that this case was not about whether the city could sell the property or that making any determination about whether that was lawful, unlawful.
Kim Niemer, Director of Community Services:
But it was more about the process that the city went about suppressing and selling the property. So after reading the court's findings and determination, the city and reflection feels like there was some good lessons learned. This transaction was one of the first ones after the adoption of the Surplus Property Land Act, which was a new law in the state of California that did put a number of new procedures in place. And so also we learned some things internally about our own processes that were inconsistent. And so it was a report out, kind of a lessons learned, but a very thorough and I would say from a non legal person, I felt that it was very easy to understand. So if you're interested in that subject again, I would I would watch the video, but the final action by the council was to rescind the resolution as well as unwind the sale. So those two were approved unanimously at the conclusion of the meeting. And after that we had two council members who attended the California Cities Conference and they reported out on some of the sessions that they had attended and also some good things learned from our peer cities. So it was a very interesting meeting. Thank you for listening in and be well.
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